NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s attempts to seek refuge outside the United States hit hurdles Tuesday, after Russian media reported he canceled his asylum bid in Russia and several European countries said such applications wouldn’t be considered if they were made from abroad.
Russian news agencies Tuesday quoted President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that Snowden withdrew his request when he learnt about the terms Moscow has set out. Putin said on Monday that Russia is ready to shelter Snowden as long as he stops leaking U.S. secrets.
At the same time, Putin said he had no plans to turn over Snowden to the United States.
Meanwhile several of the other countries where the WikiLeaks says Snowden has applied for asylum have said he cannot apply from abroad. Officials in Germany, Norway, Austria, Poland, Finland and Switzerland all said he must make his request on their soil.
WikiLeaks said requests have also been made to Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Ecuador, France, Iceland, India, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Spain and Venezuela.
The asylum requests reported by WikiLeaks and the Snowden statement could not be independently authenticated.

Maybe somebody can buttonhole him about it in the Moscow airport.

WikiLeaks also posted a statement attributed to Snowden on its website late Monday, in which he slams President Barack Obama for “using citizenship as a weapon.”

Quel Drama Queen! Edward Snowden is an American citizen and there are no plans to declare him otherwise. After all he doesn’t have a Kenyan father does he?

“Although I am convicted of nothing, (the United States) has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person,” Snowden says in the statement. “Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

(Lina Lamont voice) Says so. Right Heehah! (/Lina Lamont Voice)

“Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.”

I don’t see any Hong Kong Cavaliers, dear.

Snowden, who has been on the run since releasing sensitive NSA documents, is believed to have been in Moscow airport’s transit zone since his arrival from Hong Kong on June 23.

WikiLeaks legal adviser Sarah Harrison delivered the requests for asylum to an official at the Russian consulate at the Moscow airport on Sunday, according to the group that has adopted Snowden and his cause.
The U.S. has annulled Snowden’s passport, and Ecuador, where he had initially hoped to get asylum, has been giving mixed signals about offering him shelter.
The expanded requests for asylum come as the Obama administration contends with European allies angry about the release of documents that alleged U.S. eavesdropping on European Union diplomats.
Obama said Monday that the U.S. would provide allies with information about new reports that the NSA had bugged EU offices in Washington, New York and Brussels. But he also suggested such activity by governments would hardly be unusual.

It is unlikely that anyone has ever defected or sought asylum on foreign soil for any reason other than “Where I’m going can’t be worse than where I’ve been.” But try telling that to Edward Snowden, the on-the-lam National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified information revealing U.S. surveillance programs and by now is probably wondering if he’s ever getting out of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, where he’s stuck until the Russians and Americans figure out what to do with him. Snowden would cheerfully accept asylum in Russia, or Ecuador, or 15 other countries he’s selected, because none of those countries, unlike the United States, wants to throw him in jail. The problem with that idea, as a lot of former defectors—and individuals simply seeking asylum—could tell him, is that plain old jail can start looking pretty good after a while.
Kim Philby might have told him so, if Philby ever told anyone the truth about anything. One of the Cambridge Five, a communist spy ring of upper-crust Englishmen that included Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean, and a possible fifth person never identified, Philby spied for the Russians throughout World War II and for years thereafter. It was Philby, it turned out, who alerted Maclean and Burgess that they should escape to the Soviet Union in 1951. More dreadful, it was Philby who ran covert operations against the Russians out of MI6. In other words, England’s point man in the Cold War was a mole. (For the whole superbly told story of how Philby’s treachery was at last revealed, consult My Paper Chase, by Sir Harold Evans, who as editor of the Sunday Times of London presided over the investigation that in 1967 brought Philby’s role at MI6 to light.)
By the time the public learned of the details that prompted Philby’s defection to the Soviet Union, he’d been ensconced in Moscow for almost five years, where he lived until his death in 1988. He claimed to be unrepentant, saying he missed only some friends, Colman’s mustard, and Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce. In fact, he was kept under virtual house arrest, as the Russians were afraid he might try to return to England. He also drank heavily and attempted suicide at least once. He had gone to Moscow with the assumption that he would be named a colonel in the KGB, a promise that, if indeed made, was never kept.
At least Philby wanted to defect. Evidence suggests that Guy Burgess believed he was only helping Donald Maclean escape when they disappeared in 1951, but the KGB had no intention of ever letting Burgess fall back into English hands. Upon surfacing in the Soviet Union in 1956, he spent the rest of his short life—he died in 1963 at 52—descending ever deeper into alcoholism.

True. But as Alan Bennett and John Schlesinger note that thanks to Coral Browne he was able to get a nice suit.